Just like Ian Botham, MS Dhoni is now a doctor of letters. De Montford University gave him the honour, which led to this quite marvellous photograph:

You didn’t have a suit, MS? No? Nothing? No smart trousers or anything? Okay, no, it’s fine. No problem at all. It’s just, you know, most people dress up a bit, but it’s fine, it’s fine. Really, we’re not bothered.

Dr Dhoni isn’t our favourite Indian doctor. He’ll have had a very good career indeed if he brings us even half the joy we felt when we saw the sign for ‘Dr Dikshit’.

I haven’t been to one of those new-fangled universities like Durham and Imperial, but I’m reasonably sure that this picture hasn’t been taken at a university. Surely a university would have more lecture rooms, halls, refectories and opium dens.

This leads me to believe that a crack squad from DMU just jumped into a minibus when they heard that the Indian team was training locally, grabbed a degree and a vice chancellor from the cupboard, nicked some costumes from the Drama Socs production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, and set off to endoctorate MS before those bastards from the University of Leicester could get to him.

You have to be quick with your honorary degrees these days, otherwise there’ll only be footballers left to give them to.